In Memorium: Levon Helm

Robbie Robertson was not The Band, no matter what he thinks.  He may have written the songs.  He may have written the licks.  But you can't write the soul of a Southern man - especially not when he's a gaunt, bearded figure hunched over a drum set pounding out soul in double time while wailing Johnny Cash and Wilson Pickett through his pipes all at once.

Robbie Robertson was fascinated by the south.  Levon Helm WAS the south.  None of those songs would have worked without him to ground them.

Whenever certain artists pass, they leave you with a deep hole.  Tonight, I'm gonna fill that hole with Daniel and he Sacred Harp.    Those vocals always make me smile.

"My Home's in Alabama" by Alabama (1980)

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Still Filed Between: Aerosmith and The Allman Brothers

Key Tracks:
My Home's in Alabama, Why Lady Why, Tennessee River

Obvious Filler & Swings-and-Misses:
Get It While It's Hot doesn't hold a candle to Amos Moses.  Or Up on Cripple Creek.  Or Love Machine.  But it sure thinks it's all of them.

My Overall Rating of the Tracks Separately:
Recommended Listening (3/4 stars)

The last time I talked about Alabama, I said they were about as country as Garth Brooks.  "My Home's in Alabama" continues to prove it true.  Even so - like Garth, Alabama has some truly great songs.

The title track pretty much sums up the high points of the band's career.  The lyrics are straight country.  The sound is seventies adult contemporary (dowsed so heavily in orchestra stings that the vapors alone will give you a contact high), with the occasional harmonica or fiddle thrown in for "country's" sake.  Even the Allman Brothers' Ramblin' Man inspired guitar outro is so polished that the only thing remaining is a perfect nub.  But still, it's a great song - even in the face of its own slickness.

Why Lady Why is proof that ALABAMA IS NOT COUNTRY.  Like most of the record, it sounds like something by America, or maybe disco-era Doctor Hook.  Hank Williams it ain't.  Oh, man.  Those overbearing, in-your-face strings again...  Of course, it's a great song too.

Attention!  Attention!  I Wanna Come Over is running a sale on seventies pop music cliches!  So, what are you looking for?  Bossa nova keys?  Harmonies in the stylings of the Bee Gees?  A wood block solo?  A late nite hookup plea?  That actually works?  We've got all that and more right here!

Like Icarus, Tennessee River flies too close to the country run.  So, the boys have to melt its wings by kicking the song off with a tremolo-pedal guitar playing cheesy porno music.  (Is "cheesy porno music" redundant?)  And yet, it's still a great song.

So, is it an album?  Yes.  The sound is consistent (albeit terribly dated), even if the songwriting isn't.  By the way, the last sound you hear on on this LP is that of orchestra strings.

Up next, "American Fool" by John Cougar.  Oh yeah, life goes on...

"Live Bullet" by Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band (1976)

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Filed between: Scorpions and the soundtrack from "Shenandoah."

My overall rating of the tracks separately: Recommended Listening (3/4 stars)

Double live albums tend to be either completely self-gratifying indulgences or shameless cash grabs.  "Live Bullet" doesn't really feel like either.  This set is the first release credited as Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band, and it came out six months before they broke nationally with the release of the "Night Moves" LP.  Truthfully, "Live Bullet" sounds more like a shedding of old sking than anything; it's all of Bob Seger's greatest hits before he really had any hits.  But it also heralds things to come with radio staples like Katmandu and an almost note-for-note version of the soon-to-be-rerecorded Turn the Page.  Of course, both songs had been around for years, but they hadn't been transformed by the E Street Band Silver Bullet Band treatment yet.

As noted in the ground rules, double LPs don't play by the same rules or have the same "album" criteria, so I'm going to talk about each side of the set separately.

SIDE I:

Key Track: Travelin' Man/Beautiful Loser medley
Kicks Off With: Bob yelling, "Hey Detroit!"
This side covers all of the obligatory promotion of the last album.  Every song is from Bob's previous release, "Beautiful Loser."  Nutbush City Limits establishes a great bluesy rock vibe as an opener.  After that, this side is a string of ballads.

SIDE II:

Key Track: Bo Diddley/Who Do You Love medley
Kicks Off With: Bob announcing, "We'd like to do a funky thing here."
He's not kidding.  The funk is in full force on Side II.  His take on Van Morrison's I've Been Working fires it up.  The long solo outro is arena rock at its best.  Then, Turn the Page gets jammed in there for no apparent reason, followed by the funky-yet-dull U.M.C.  (How can something be funky-yet-dull?  I dunno.  Go listen to U.M.C. and find out.)  And then it roars to a close with a rockin' Bo Diddley medley that's filtered through horns and keys and a great bassline.

SIDE III:

Key Track: Katmandu
Kicks Off With: a backbeat.  Hell, yeah!
The triplet of songs on Side III are bluesy, Stonesesque almost-Southern rock.  This is the close of the regular set before the encore.  These are the songs you talk about after the show.

This is also where the "breakdown" occurs.  If you've been to enough live shows, you've seen what happens in Heavy Music.  It begins with the song descending into a drone of bass and drums, into the lead singer talking about random shit, into the lead singer goosing the crowd into singing a chorus, into a slow tempo uptick, into getting the crowd to repeat the word "yeah," into the gradual introduction of more instruments, intro a crescendo into power chords, into red hot guitar licks, into a call and answer between the vocalist and the lead guitarist, into a moment of absolute silence before the band rips into the next uptempo rocker.  I swear, I have personally experienced that exact sequence from various bands at least a dozen times.  And it never gets old.

Side IV:

Key Track: Get Out of Denver
Kicks Off With: a DJ's holler of "Alllllllll riiiiiiiiight!!!!!"
This is the encore bit.  It starts with a CCR-style of R&B (or maybe a Sam and Dave-style of rock 'n roll) on the opener.  Then, it lights into an insistent twelve-bar shuffle on Get Out of Denver.  Now that's an encore song.  And it closes with more of the same until it literally ends up being a Chuck Berry cover.

So, is it an album?  Yes.  It really does feel like being at a good live show.

Up next, we're back to the country-pop of Alabama with their 1980 release, "My Home's in Alabama."

"Billion Dollar Babies" by Alice Cooper (1973)

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Fun Fact: I am convinced that the opening notes of the  "Beavis and Butt-Head" theme song TOTALLY rip off No More Mister Nice Guy.

Filed between: The Commodores and Cornelius Brothers & Sister Rose.

Key Tracks. 
I love No More Mister Nice Guy.  It's the reason I bought "Billion Dollar Babies."  It was my favorite Alice Cooper track... until I heard the next song on the LP - Generation Landslide.  Unfinished Sweet and Sick Things are both "experiential" songs.  I'll talk about that some more in a sec.

Obvious Filler & Swings-and-Misses:
None.

My Overall Rating of the Tracks Separately:
HIGHLY Recommended (3.5/4 stars)

I can't pin Alice Cooper down.  To be honest, I can't even find a genre to pile him into.  Hard rockers and metalheads lay claim to him, and for good reason. His persona, macabre image and ultra-dark lyrics make it seem like a no-brainer.  Let me give you a few examples:

• "Alone, raped and freezin'"
• "De Sade's gonna live in my mouth tonight"
• "Alcohol and razor blades and straight pins and needles, Kindergarten people - they use 'em, they need 'em"
• "Molotov milk bottles heaved from pink high chairs"
• "I love the dead before they're cold"

As a metal fan myself, I would love to heave him in with the likes of Sabbath and Maiden, but Alice goes so much deeper than that.

Many parts of "Billion Dollar Babies" are Beatles-esque.  (Seems we just can't escape The Beatles lately.)  The arrangements include horns, piano and even (gasp!) a juice harp.  I swear George Martin was hovering somewhere near when they hit that beautiful harmony on No More Mister Nice Guy with the "my cat clawed my eye" line and the fantastic piano outro on Sick Things.  Mary-Ann sounds like it could've fit in perfectly on The White Album.  I Love the Dead sounds like it wants desperately to have been on "Abbey Road," but never would've made it for obvious reasons.

The guitars on "Billion Dollar Babies" dance between metal-ish, hard rock and punky, with seemingly random departures into surf rock and the blues.  (That's a compliment, by the way.)  All of the songs have a great classic rock groove.  They all also have a very punky stance.  And a heart made of pure art/experimental rock.

And the vocals are unlike any act I have ever heard before or since.  They don't even try to fit in anywhere.

So, how do you classify that?  Alice calls it "pretty good Vaudeville."

Personally, the only way I can think to describe it is "experiential."  You can't explain or adequately convey what's going on in songs like Unfinished Sweet or Sick Things - they have to be experienced.  And that's what Alice has always been about on record or on stage or in life - the experience of what's going on.

So, is it an album?  Yes.  Every song is a different facet of the same weirdness.

Up next, one of my all time favorite artists (and our first double album) - Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band with "Live Bullet."  (And a DOUBLE LIVE album at that!)

"Take It to the Limit" by Willie Nelson with Waylon Jennings (1983)

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Fun Fact: Here's a really good Willie Nelson cover of the Beatles' One after 909.  (That'll make more sense in a minute).

Filed between: Ricky Nelson and New Edition

Key Tracks:
No Love at All, We Had It All, Take It to the Limit, Blackjack County Chains

Obvious Filler and Swings-and-Misses:
Homeward Bound and Would You Lay with Me (In a Field of Stone) are both swings-and-misses

My Overall Rating of the Tracks Separately:
Recommended Listening (3/4 stars)

Willie Nelson is The Beatles of country music - I give him credit for many of the innovations we take for granted now.

He may not have redefined country-blues songwriting in the early sixties, but he certainly reimagined it and raised the bar for everybody else with songs like Night Life, Funny How Time Slips Away and the iconic Crazy.  Those same type of sparse, unnervingly hollow tunes show up on "Take It to the Limit" with tracks like We Had It All and Why Do I Have to Choose.  The latter is classic Willie, until the saxophone kicks in.  There should never be a saxaphone in a sad cowboy song.

Like The Beatles, he had an excellent sense of, but no regard for genre boundaries.  He proved that with "Stardust" and tried to see how far he could take it in the eighties on duets with the likes of Ray Charles and Julio Iglesias.

And speaking of duets...  He did not, however, create the country duet.  Discounting family acts like The Carters and The Stanleys, that distinction goes to Porter Wagoner & Dolly Parton in my book.  But I'm pretty sure that Willie did create the "outlaw duet."  And that's way cooler and lot less obvious.  On "Take It to the Limit," No Love at All and Blackjack County Chains deliver exactly what you want to hear on such a duet.  They're boisterous and raucous and fun.  As a bonus, they don't slip into the quagmire of eighties tropes that instantly date and weigh them down like so many of Nelson's otherwise great outings.  (I'm looking at you, Pancho & Lefty.)

And most of all, same as The Beatles, Willie Nelson GETS MUSIC.  He understands it on a fundamental level.  He knows what works and how to goose that for even more.  It's not just his originals, he's also a master of interpretation.  Just look at "Stardust."  On "Take It to the Limit," he tackles three covers of songs that I really love and am uber-protective of anybody (even Willie Nelson) trying to do.  So, how does it pan out?  Well, two end up as swings-and-misses.  Of course, swings-and-misses here mean that each one is a perfectly adequate version, it's just not THE version.  Attempting Homeward Bound is a losing proposition to begin with - you're not going to catch Paul Simon.  The same is true for Would You Lay with Me (In a Field of Stone).  David Allan Coe's monumental original vocal delivery can't be touched.  On top of that, both songs fall prey to the eighties tropes mentioned earlier.  Damned eighties tropes.  But the title track (and the track I was most ready to cringe at), works really well.  I instinctively cover my ears when I know somebody's about to cover anything off of The Eagles' Greatest Hits 1971-1975.  (You know, the one with the bird skull on the cover.)  But Willie and Waylon make it work here and work well.  They will never replace Randy Meisner, but they put out a decent alternative.  And to me, that's the key to any good cover, making it your own while respecting the original.  That's something Willie Nelson is expert at.  Even the other covers that I didn't like so much were a new, legitimate take on a great song. 

So, is it an album?  Yes.  Much like The Beatles, Willie Nelson introduced the notion of "the album" to genre mainstream with "Red Headed Stranger" (a concept album, no less!) and never let up.  "Take It to the Limit" is definitely an album.  It's credited as Willie Nelson "with" Waylon Jennings and that couldn't be more accurate.  Everything here is funneled through "The Willie Filter."  And, like I said, Willie Nelson GETS MUSIC.

Up next, we get back into classic hard rock, coated in a thick layer of filthy sweat for good measure - it's "Billion Dollar Babies" by Alice Cooper.

"Galveston" by Jim Nabors (1969)

NO PHOTO AVAILABLE.

All the album cover pics I found were expressly copyrighted.  First time this has happened.  Jim Nabors' website doesn't even have a picture available for this thing.  The Owen Mills-esque collage of him belting something out in a red sequin jacket is copyrighted, so I can't link to that either.  But I can link to his homepage - just click on "Photos" when you get there.  There's also a pic of Jim with Bill Clinton on page nine...

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Filed between: A big band compilation called "Music from the Dance Years" assembled by the Dole Food Company and Nazareth.  Lordy, oh Lordy, why couldn't it have been Nazareth?

Key Tracks: Um...

Obvious Filler & Swings-and-Misses:
The whole damn thing.  You can't even call any of the songs failed attempts because they never bother trying.

My Overall Rating of the Tracks Separately:
Don't bother.  Seriously, don't bother.

Okay, first let me explain how I came into possession of a Jim Nabors LP in the first place.  When I first got back into vinyl, my mom wanted to give me all of her old records.  That was fine with me because she had some cherries.  Problem was, she couldn't find them.  Then one day she was visiting the old family property where she grew up and found a box of records.  In a chicken coop.  Where they had sat for almost forty years.  With chickens.  Hand to God, I am not making this up.  She brought them home, assuming they were hers.  On top were the "Help" soundtrack and an old 78 RPM single by the Carter Family.  I knew immediately two things: these were absolutely NOT my mom's records and I absolutely wanted them.  My mom hates The Beatles and anything remotely bluegrass; I love them both.  So I took them home and pored through them.  I didn't consider it stealing because they had been sitting in a chicken coop for nigh on forty years, so they couldn't have been missed that much.  Unfortunately, after those first two records, most everything else was Lawrence Welk, Barry Manilow, Liberace and... well... Jim Nabors.

Jim Nabors is terrible.  I have to go ahead and get that out in the interest of full disclosure.  I found myself looking for something else to do during every moment of "Galveston."

In doing so, I realized something.  This godawful record from 1969 exemplifies a whole lot of what I really hate about popular music in the 2000's.

I began my diatribe on "The Nashville Sound" when I discussed Alabama.  Here's part two.  The country music industry has always had this annoying habit of taking already popular songs and redoing them.  It was rampant in the sixties and it's still going on today.  One of my favorite games is to guess which pop or R&B song has gotten so big that some random country artist (my default answer is Gary Allan) is going to do a "down home" version of it.  Nowadays, that means a twangified glam-metal-power-ballad rendition, because that's what Nashville seems to think the kids like.  Just ask Rascal Flatts.

And covers are rampant on "Galveston" - most of them had been released only a year or two before.  I can kind of understand something like Green Green Grass of Home.  It is to country singers what Kim Kardashian is to professional athletes - everybody's had a go at it.  But, by the time Nabors got around to doing it, it had already been covered by Porter Wagoner, Bobby Bare, Johnny Cash AND Merle Haggard.  You do the math.  Then there are crazy, random things like I've Gotta Be Me, which Sammy Davis, Jr. had a hit with in '68.  Nabors also has the stones to cover recent, quirky hits like Glen Campbell's Wichita Lineman and Roger Miller's Little Green Apples.  What's more, he tries to do it without a smirk of irony or self-deprecation.

But the most egregious offense has to be his cover Stevie Wonder's For Once in My Life.  'Nuff said.

So, pursuing the Nashville trend of picking songs that have already been road tested (if they liked it once, they should like it again) without significantly altering the arrangements leaves you with only one thing to make anybody want to hear this music - the voice.  Unfortunately, that only works if your name is Frank Sinatra.  Hell, even Michael Buble changes the arrangements around.

And I HATE Jim Nabors' voice.  He is so concerned with being pitch perfect that he loses every ounce of soul and gives a flat, robotic delivery without fail.  It's operatic without being bombastic.  That's bad.

And that's another thing that grouses me about music right now.  It's lost its soul in a big way.  Whenever I accidentally stumble across a few minutes of "American Idol," it seems like it's always people trying to out-perfect each other without any guts or depth.  I miss depth.  I miss that oomph that comes from reaching for a note and breaking before getting there, rather than succeeding.  Auto-tune and Pro Tools make sure that never happens.

So, is it an album?  No.  Granted, the sound is cohesive.  However, it's all other people's visions with no interpretation or any hint of trying to reflect his own personality.

Up next, we see if country music can redeem itself.  It's "Take It to the Limit" by Willie Nelson & Waylon Jennings.  (By the way, the title track is a cover song.)

"Imagination" by Gladys Knight and The Pips (1973)

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Filed between: The Knack and Krokus.

My Overall Rating of the Tracks Separately: Above Average (2.5/4 stars)

Disclaimer: I've never really been much of a Gladys Knight fan.  She always seemed a little TOO polished and pristine - sort of like a rich man's Aretha Franklin.  (Except on The Muppets, I really liked her on The Muppets.)  Here version of I Heard It through the Grapevine is probably just my fourth favorite after Marvin Gaye, CCR and The California Raisins - and that's only because I don't really know any other versions.

But there is one song where she shines with a blinding light and I can't imagine ANYBODY else doing it as well.

That's the reason my eyes lit up when I came across this LP at a Goodwill.  I was mindlessly flipping through a scant selection that was almost entirely comprised of Lawrence Welk, Christmas records and the Lawrence Welk Christmas record when "Imagination" popped up among them. (That's why you should always look through all the records, even if the top of the pile doesn't seem like your cup of tea - everybody's collection always has that one oddball.)  I was pretty sure it was the right one, but I hurriedly flipped it over to make sure.  And there it was - side one, track one.

Midnight Train to Georgia.  Ah.  That is one of my all-time, top-five favorite R&B songs.  If you were to tell me Midnight Train to Georgia is the single greatest song ever recorded, I won't argue a tick.  It's those phenomenally sad lyrics about failure and sacrifice melded with a sound that is absolutely triumphant.  In that juxtaposition, hope is born.  And that is one of the core tenets of soul music; and Gladys Knight knows it on a moleculuar level when she performs Midnight Train to Georgia.

And then there are The Pips.  Let me go ahead and get this out the way: "a superstar, but he didn't get far...whoo, whoo!"  I can't think of another song where the backup singers get the best, most singable parts.  That interplay works almost like a retooling of an old call-and-answer number and it gives it more depth, more soul and way more fun.

I have listened to Midnight Train to Georgia on vinyl more than any other song in my collection.  "Imagination" is about the only LP I'll pull out for the sole purpose of listening to a single track.  I always hope it'll be just as good as the last time I heard it, and it always is.

And then I put the record away again.  All of the other songs are okay, but they're just kind of there.  You don't remember any of them once you put the record back in its sleeve.  But that's fine.  In this case, one outstanding song makes up for eight mediocre tracks.

So, is it an album?  Yes.  Even though it doesn't have a lot of heft to it after the opening track, "Imagination" is still a well-produced, well-arranged, tight little chunk of seventies soul.

Up next - finally, a chicken coop record!  (I'll explain next time around...)  I had to spin this one to make sure it even played.  It does, and it's "Galveston" by Jim Nabors.